Arotrios , 1 year ago

I spent a lot of my twenties trying to get a publishing group off the ground using a worker co-op model. It became clear pretty quickly that a hierarchy of responsibility was needed simply to keep the workflow moving, as relying on the self-motivation of contributors was a recipe for disaster, especially for those doing editorial or production work.

In my estimation, it can work, but only if the workers take on the attitude that they truly own the business and are responsible for it. This requires a higher level of scrutiny on incoming members than in a traditional business structure, as bad actors can have an outsized affect on a organization with loose hierarchical controls.

Sadly, my experience led me to believe that most people are more willing to work for someone telling them what to do than they are for themselves. The ability to muster effort and energy behind effective self-motivation is a rarer trait than most of us would like to admit. For a co-op to be successful against corporate competitors, every worker has to take responsibility for the organization and its success. In a corporation, only the boss has to - the workers only have to be responsible for what their boss thinks of them, not the direction of the company.